ABSTRACT

This chapter explains the activity to help put parents back in charge of sleeping behaviors in the home. Parents, often with the best of intentions, allow young children to sleep in the parental bed. Dysfunctional marital patterns can also play a role, such as when a child is triangled into marital strife and is led into the parental bed to provide a buffer against an alienated spouse. Sherry was a single parent who had been divorced for two years. Her youngest child, four-year-old Joshua, had established a fairly good routine of sleeping in his own bed, with occasional trips to his mother's bedroom in the middle of the night because he was 'scared of monsters'. The therapist can follow up by complimenting the child on his or her monster-slaying ability and may even want to generalize and find other ways that the child has been brave and overcome problem situations.